Re: Tcl/Tk Interface Unification

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Hans Ronne wrote:

> >following arguments: tcltk, sdl, xtxaw, curses. And "tcltk" would
> >be the default setting, at least while the SDL interface is so
> >primitve. This would also deprecate the usage of "enable-sdl".
> 
> Right. But wouldn't it be simpler to just scrap enable-sdl and enable
> building by default of all interfaces that are supported in terms of
> installed libraries? This is after all how cconq already works. As long as
> all apps have different names, there should be no problems.

We can do that. But this would mean that someone would still have 
to explicitly do:
  make all-cconq
  make install-cconq
to get the curses interface. I think this requires the same amount 
of knowledge as knowing to add a configure option on the command 
line. And "configure --help" gives better feedback to a user than 
reading a Makefile template to find out what interfaces are 
available.

I was thinking that with the enable-ui option we could then just 
choose an interface at configure time, and then, if 
enable-ui=curses:
  make
  make install
would simply do the trick.

Of course, the main motivator is that I could easily include a 
dir=@UI_DIR@ in all of the top-level targets, and this would make 
things a bit nicer than the SDL_LIB test that I have now.

> Yes. Another inconsistency right now is where the apps are built. Cconq is
> built in the curses directory, which makes sense, but xconq and sdlconq are
> built in the x11 directory, which doesn't make much sense anymore.

The changes, which I announced earlier, address this. (They are 
the reason why I haven't committed anything for nearly a week. :-)

> One
> solution would be to build them in the tcltk and sdl directories,
> respectively. 

This is the solution I implemented.

>Another is to put all apps in the top directory, as is
> already done for the Mac and Windows apps. I think the latter option has
> some advantages, since it makes it easier to find the apps for the
> inexperienced user. The top directory is also the only location where the
> apps work consistently on all platforms.

IMO, the top-level Makefile would be greatly cluttered if we built 
the apps there. But, I agree, the executables would be easier to 
find if they were placed there. I will make it so executables 
(xconq,cconq,wconq.exe) get copied upstairs from their build 
directories. 

  Regards,
   Eric